What is one lead scoring metric you use to quantify the quality of an inbound lead?
If you have no way of separating and evaluating your inbound leads, you’ll be stuck chasing non-value and low-quality leads through the dark, wasting both resources and time with little to no payoff. But you can quickly identify which inbound leads are worth the pursuit and effort by considering these 10 metrics, provided by marketing and sales professionals.
- The Call to Action
- Ability to Purchase Our Products or Services
- The Number of Touchpoints
- Personal Information Provided
- Engagement
- Who’s Sitting at the Table
- Google Analytics’ Value Metric
- Time From First Interaction to Goal Conversion
- The Ideal Customer Profile
- Company Size
The Call to Action
One of the best lead scoring metrics that we use is the “call to action” metric. This metric is a great way to quantify the quality of an inbound lead because it measures how likely a lead is to take the next step towards becoming a customer. This metric is calculated by dividing the number of times a customer clicks on a call-to-action button (e.g., “Talk to a sales rep”) on your website or in an email by the number of times they view that button.
Determining the chances of a lead following through a call to action allows us to identify which leads are most likely to engage with us and take the next step towards becoming a customer. The end result is that it allows us to efficiently focus our marketing efforts on leads who are most likely to convert.
Matthew Ramirez, CEO, Rephrasely
Ability to Purchase Our Products or Services
At our company, we use a few different metrics to score leads and help us determine which ones are more qualified than others. One metric we use is based on the lead’s interactions with our website. This includes things like how many pages they view, how long they stay on each page, and whether or not they fill out any forms. We also look at the lead’s score in our Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system. The CRM tells us how interested these leads are in our products or services, and how likely they are to convert into a paying customer.
Finally, we take into account the demographic information of the lead. This helps us understand if they’re in our target market, and if they have the ability to purchase our products or services. By taking all of these factors into account, we’re able to create a more complete picture of each lead and determine which ones are more likely to turn into sales.
Jim Campbell, Founder, Wizve Digital Marketing
The Number of Touchpoints
One lead scoring metric I use to quantify the quality of an inbound lead is the number of touchpoints the lead has had with my company. A touchpoint is any interaction the lead has had, whether it’s visiting our website, downloading a white paper, or attending a trade show.
The more touchpoints a lead has had, the more likely they are to be qualified. This is because each touchpoint represents an opportunity for the lead to learn more about our company and what we offer. A lead who has had multiple touchpoints is more likely to be familiar with our company and our products, and is therefore more likely to be a qualified lead.
Benjamin Basic, Content Writer, Fast Food Menu Prices
Personal Information Provided
I would say that one of the most important lead scoring metrics is the quantity of information a lead provides you when they submit their contact information. The more information they provide, the higher the quality of lead they’re likely to be. If you only get a name and email address, that’s not enough to tell you anything about their interests or what they want from you. Therefore, I think one of the best ways to improve your quality of an inbound lead is to ask for more information from your leads.
If possible, have leads fill out some sort of questionnaire related to your company’s product or service, and then use that information to classify them into a specific group or audience segment. This will save you time later when you’re trying to decide whether or not a lead is worth pursuing, and it’ll give you even more information about what they want from you in the future.
Tiffany Homan, COO, Texas Divorce Laws
Engagement
One metric we look at is how often the lead has visited our website. If they’ve been coming back to the website repeatedly, there’s a good chance this inbound lead is actively interested in our product. This metric allows our sales team to engage and prioritize leads accordingly based on how much engagement we’re receiving from the lead on our website. This is a great way to score your leads and quantify their quality.
Scott Krager, Founder, TubeSplit.com
Who’s Sitting at the Table
In our experience, the team members attending the preliminary meeting are an essential scoring metric that we use to determine the quality of the lead. If a single person attends the meeting, they’re less likely to be a fit for our agency. If a small group, including one key decision maker, attends the meeting, we can move them to the next phase in our client qualification journey. When 3-4 people participate in the meeting, there’s a greater chance that their business is ready for the level of service we offer.
Jason Vaught, Director of Content, SmashBrand
Google Analytics’ Value Metric
20+ years into online marketing one would expect most businesses to have a sophistication with Google Analytics by now; one can certainly expect that all marketers know and are familiar as a matter of priority. What is a lead worth? Google Analytics provides a freely available attribution metric that helps associate the value of engagement with your site or app, across all other data it provides. Want to know what a keyword is worth to you? Curious about which blog post is most valuable? Wish you knew if Chicago or Austin was a more valuable market?
For every GOAL (which you have to set up in the platform) accomplished on your site or app, make sure you’re associating a specific value with that goal’s completion. A value is not direct revenue associated with that happening (it’s not just a Cart Checkout or Purchase). A goal is a white paper download, a form completion, or a demo booked. What is that worth to you? What is the lead worth to you? Analytics will tell you what to spend and where to get more valuable leads.
Paul O’Brien, CEO, MediaTech Ventures
Time From First Interaction to Goal Conversion
The metric I use most to quantify the quality of an inbound lead is the time between when a prospect first interacts with our company and when they convert on a goal (e.g. fill out a form, register for a webinar, etc.). We’re looking for leads that are quickly engaging with our brand and then converting shortly thereafter.
We track this by creating what’s called a “lead velocity” metric, which is simply the number of days between first interaction and conversion divided by the total number of days between first interaction and conversion. That gives us our average number of days. So if somebody converts tomorrow, their velocity would be 0 if they converted 365 days after their first interaction with us.
Jamie Irwin, Director, Straight Up Search
The Ideal Customer Profile
It’s important to identify your ICP (Ideal Customer Profile) in order to quantify the quality of an inbound lead. The ICP needs to have strong authority, a budget, and a need for your product. Write content they’ll like across all your marketing channels by researching their availability, figuring out what they read, and finding out what they’re interested in.
For example, genuinely thank these ideal customers for their latest blog comments in an email. You should get to know your audience. Knowing your audience and what they like is the key to scoring your inbound leads effectively. You should be able to easily identify what their pain points are as well as their wants and needs.
John B. Martyn, Content Manager, Brightest Minds
Company Size
Lead scoring can get complex, and narrowing it down to one metric would be a little difficult. Having said that, the most important thing here is whether the size of the company fits the minimum size of the company that would be opting in for an enterprise plan and not one of the self-service plans we offer.We also look at the target regions, but these are less important if the abovementioned is right.
Dino Kukic, Head of Demand Generation, Hygraph
